Another goes to observe the people of London as they live through the Blitz and the third historian poses as a maid so she can observe the life of children sent from the cities to the country to get them away from the German bombing campaign. One goes to witness the heroic actions of normal people who sailed their civilian boats across the English Channel to rescue Allied soldiers from mainland Europe as France was falling.

In Blackout/All Clear we follow 3 historians sent back to observe different facets of WWII. This slippage (both in time and location) has proven fatal in the past for historians so, with a healthy respect of the rules of time travel and every conceivable precaution in place, the historians travel back in time and normally nothing goes wrong.

A would-be assassin of Hitler might pick a specific location and time (say the opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics) but when he/she travels back that person will, inevitably, end up in the wrong year, 335 BC for example, or the wrong location, say in the middle of the Amazon rain forest, or both. Early on it was discovered that some process associated with time itself ensures that historians could not affect history. The year is 2060 AD and time travel is settled science with Oxford University in England sending historians back in time for decades. Pros: engages the reader’s attention on multiple levels from page one and sustains it all the way through to the end – 1100+ pages later, great cast of characters where even the characters with small parts to play are given the depth and personality to feel like real people, easy to read and hard to put down, the use of Great Britian’s homefront during WWII as the main backdrop for this novel is a refreshingly different take on WWII and the author has done absurdly exhaustive research to make the time period feel authenticĬons: Some readers (including newer readers) might find the scenes taking place in the future (England 2060 AD) unrealistic and off-putting because of the lack of cellphones and widespread internet usage Story

I couldn’t put Blackout/All Clear down (each book was really half of a single novel, like LOTR) so, because I haven’t written about SF in a long while and because I think this novel has a much greater chance for non-SF readers to enjoy it then normal, I’m going to write my review up – hoping to convince someone from my huge readership (all couple dozen of you) to give this excellent novel a chance. This lead me to a second book and then to rereading Blackout by Connie Willis before reading All Clear, also by her. Why does even the best laid plans seem to get thrown out the window so quickly? Right now I had hoped to be working on my year end anime posts (after finishing the seasonal one I have partly up) but I made the mistake of picking up one of the books I got for Christmas.

Blackout and all clear